Larry Brown, the only coach to win both an NBA and NCAA basketball Championship is the new basketball coach at SMU.
The over/under on Brown's stay on Mockingbird Lane is 3 years.
Brown, 71, has not coached since 2010, when he resigned from the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats. SMU is his 14th head coaching position, 10 with NBA teams and 4 college stops (Davidson, UCLA, Kansas, SMU). He never coached a game at Davidson, taking the job in the summer of 1972 and then leaving for the Carolina Cougars of the ABA.
Brown hasn't coached in the college ranks since 1988, and has no real ties to Texas High School or AAU programs, but he is expected to bring along a high-powered staff, including current Illinois State Head Coach (and former UT assistant) Tim Jankovich as a head coach-in-waiting.
Jankovich is out of the same nomadic mold as Brown, having served as an assistant at 9 different schools, including Texas under Bob Weltlich, Baylor and Oklahoma State. Jankovich has also been the head coach at North Texas.
Jankovich spent 7 years working for Kansas Coach Bill Self, who was a graduate assistant for Brown with the Jayhawks.
Jerrance Howard, a former player and assistant coach at Illinois is expected to also join the staff. Howard is considered to to one of the best collegiate recruiters around. Rod Strickland, who has spent the past two years as an administrative assistant with John Calipari at Kentucky is also expected to join Brown at SMU. Calipari is also part of the Brown coaching tree, having been a graduate assistant at Kansas.
Naming a coach-in-waiting would seem mandatory for Brown and SMU since he is 71 and has averaged less than 4 years at any coaching stop during his 50 years in basketball.
Maybe the allure of playing in the Big East for Brown will help recruiting, and the Mustangs need all the help they can get. Brown replaces another former North Carolina basketball star, Matt Doherty, who was fired after six seasons as coach. He produced just one winning season and never finished higher than 7th in Conference USA.
In fact, the last time SMU even reached the NCAA tournament was in 1993, and Dave Bliss was their coach the last time they won an NCAA tournament game (1988).